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Thursday, 19 November 2015

International Men’s Day

This post falls very much into the category of “things I am
not an expert in”. So I tread somewhat wearily. The post reflects on the Athena SWAN process
and it is inspired by my colleague Paul Cairney who wrote this
excellent post reflecting on the process too.

So, today is International Men’s Day, which just loosely
frames this post. And now to immediately go off on a slight tangent, my
colleagues Vikki McCall, Jane Smithson and I are leading on an Athena SWAN
application. Athena SWAN emerged from the Science, Technology, Engineering and
Mathematics (STEM) disciplines as a process to encourage women into these
subject and once they were in, to progress to the highest levels on a par with
their male colleagues. This recognised the long-standing issue that far more
men than women enter these subjects and women tended to drop out before
reaching Professorial level. If you don’t think this should be an issue, I shall
point you in the direction of new Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s comments
on gender equality.

The ECU have broadened Athena SWAN to cover the ASSHBL
(Arts, Social Science, Humanities, Business and Law [I prefer SSHABL myself])
subjects. This makes perfect sense to me – the world’s population is 51% women
and 49% men, if we’re going to increase women’s representation in STEM to 51%
we need to (possibly) increase men’s representation to 49% in the ASSHBL
subjects.

Now, I’m not saying the social sciences are not sexist. I
have heard many horribly stories of everyday sexism from women colleagues in
the social sciences; I have seen horrifically sexist behaviour in seminar or
conferences; I have seen the massive differential expectations on men and women
academics in the social sciences; and I have blogged about the awful macho working hours culture that pervades the social sciences as much as any other
area of academe.

But – and here is where it gets tricky – one of the main
challenges we have found in evidence gathering for our Athena SWAN plan is what
I refer to as the “feminisation” of our subjects: sociology, social policy,
criminology, social work and education, particularly at an undergraduate level.
The term “feminisation” I’ve borrowed from colleagues in Biology where it is
used to describe how their subject, fairly rapidly, changed from being one men
would do to being one women would do. It seems to us that when people are choosing what subjects to study at university, they look at us and think "that's a woman's degree subject".

If we look nationally, 60% of graduates from Scottish universities
are now women. Whereas around three-quarters of the students on our programmes
are women. This is a particular problem in programmes like Primary Education
and Social Work because in broader workforce terms there are long-standing
recognised issues with a lack of men in these professions. Even more concerning
for us, is that there is some evidence (with a million-and-one caveats attached
to it) that these men might not do as well as the women on our programmes – again this
reflects broader societal changes.

The question is, what can we do about this? It seems talking
about it has been a brilliant start actually – there’s been really useful input
from colleagues over the past few months as we’ve been discussing these issues.
One of the better Tweets about International Men’s Day I saw was this one
which links to broader debates about the “crisis of masculinity”. One of our
own undergraduates, off their own back, responded to our data by asking what
the gender breakdown of students accessing student support services was – it was
overwhelmingly women. As touched on in those stats on men’s mental health and suicide,
I ruminated whether we’re in this situation:

Little girls are taught at school to be super-bright, work
really hard and always ask for help. Little boys are taught at school to be
boisterous and self-reliant, and if they have a problem it’s their own. There
might not even be a male role-model around for them to ask for help from. At
university this means women get incredibly stressed and anxious about
assessment, but then ask for help and support and ultimately do very well. Men,
meanwhile, sit back and do nothing and just go with the flow.

There is also the role of assessment methods in here,
although a quick search for this
journal for the term “gender” didn’t inspire me with confidence that I’d
find answers. So, there’s more research and work for my colleagues and I to get
at here. But, if you can suggest things to help us on our way, I would welcome
any comments.

I am to be an assessor for a number of Athena SWAN submissions from ASSHBL departments in the New Year and I'll be really interested to see how they tackle their issue, but also how they tackle the issue I tentatively mentioned above: I think in the ASSHBL subjects, and particularly social science, men very easily presume that because they're left-liberal and feminist they are not sexist, and there is not a greater reflection on culture and behaviour. If Athena SWAN is going to make an impact in the ASSHBL subjects then, as my colleague Prof. Cairney highlights, we will need buy-in from all academic staff and also probably greater culture change than seen in the STEM subjects. /edit: if you want to read something much better about International Men's Day, read First Dog on the Moon's amazing cartoon here.

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About Me

I'm a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling.
I blog about urban policy, cycling and other ephemera in a semi-professional manner. All posts represent personal opinions.